Political Winds

I would agree that YouTube’s airing of comments by other politicians, in particular, those of George Allen, had much more impact than those mentioned in the article. I would add that in some cases, this phenomenon is not merely the result of having a camera in the room where otherwise the comments would have gone unrecorded. Sometimes in fact, a reporter from the mainstream media might be present, but because of time or space restraints or indeed the lack of a good reportorial instinct, he or she doesn’t mention the sideshow or little detail that turns out to be a big deal. As a former reporter for CNN, I understand how that can happen. But one has only to remember the aforementioned Strom Thurmond’s birthday party. The media was there, but it was the blogging community that saw first that Trent Lott’s racist reference was a story. So “viral video” is simply the latest manifestation or tool of the user-generated content that is changing politics.

The Politico comments page

Grant Perry is a new media consultant, university lecturer, journalist and lawyer. He is president of Evolution Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in new media strategies and content development. Perry is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches “Journalism in the Digital Age” in the graduate Communication in Contemporary Society program. He is also developing a major center for global media entrepreneurship at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

Previously, Perry was vice president of Winning Connections, a Washington political consulting firm, and headed Global Media Innovations, which produced Webcasts, Web video, TV segments and marketing promotions for Yahoo, Salon.com, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and Francis Ford Coppola.

An award-winning journalist, Grant was a New York-based correspondent for CNN and the anchor of CNN International’s London-based business program, World Business Today. During his nearly four years as anchor, Grant conducted extended interviews with leading business and political leaders, including Margaret Thatcher, French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, Indian Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke, Sony Chairman Akio Morita, British Airways CEO Colin Marshall, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Disney Chairman & CEO Michael Eisner, Soros Fund Management Chairman George Soros, Virgin Chairman Richard Branson and Bertelsmann CEO Mark Wössner. Grant also was chief political correspondent for two network affiliates in the Midwest.

Perry runs the “Innovators Forum” speaker series at American University’s School of Communication, where he also has taught a graduate journalism seminar. Perry is an attorney and member of the Washington, DC Bar. He has contributed to public radio’s Marketplace and to a number of periodicals.

I came across an appalling artifact from Boing Boing via Progressive Historians and Kos. It’s from an 1858 article in Harper’s Weekly.

… We need no longer, it seems, travel to China or Japan for illustrations of torture. A visit to our own penitentiaries and prisons will furnish all the horrors that the curious appetite can desire… The convict, More, was a negro. He is certified to have been a man of naturally pleasant temper, but violent when crossed. On 1st inst. he was said to have been in a bad humor; he was seen, or is said to have been seen, to sharpen a knife, and mutter threats against someone; on the strength of which he was, on 24 inst., seized by several keepers or deputy-keepers of the State Prison, and by them dragged toward the shower-bath for punishment. It seems he stood in dire dread of the the shower-baths; all the water that was in the tank — amounting to from three to five barrels, the quantity is uncertain — was showered upon him in spite of his piteous cries; a few minutes after his release from the bath he fell prostrate, was carried to his cell, and died in five minutes. It is this homicide that we this week illustrate.
- New York Public Library Digital Gallery

So here we are nearly 150 years later and the leaders of the United States of America haven’t yet adopted the view of an 1858 publication that the use of water to inflict severe physical discomfort and instill fear amounts to torture.

I recently spoke to Rudy Michaels, a 90 year-old World War II veteran who was a member of an elite US Army interrogation unit known as the Ritchie Boys. Rudy is Jewish, a German native who fled his country in 1938. He returned to Europe in 1944 to interrogate Nazis. Today, Rudy, a retired judge and law professor, is angry. His adopted country taught him that the Geneva Conventions were to be “honored,” and now he hears that physical abuse of prisoners is justified and doesn’t always amount to torture. He heard Vice President Cheney say that “a dunk in water” wasn’t torture but rather a “very important tool.” Rudy told me,

I was absolutely appalled by what Cheney said… I never touched a guy the whole time…The first time I saw one of the Gitmo guys in an orange suit in shackles, I thought what the hell are these people doing? They’re not going to get anything useful out them. If I spoke Arabic as fluently as I spoke German, and you let me loose in that prison, I’d milk the entire population.

Well, more than five years after 9-11, it seems we still don’t have many Arabic speakers in the CIA or the military. But during that time, the Bush administration has managed to bring us back to early 19th century definitions of torture.

Note: I will be publishing a longer article about how the Ritchie Boys’ experience relates to today… more to come on that soon.

Bush looked tense and scared, as he should be. But while his swagger has disappeared, his delusions have not. Most of the press and punditocracy have been critical of Bush’s speech (hallelujah!). Much of the commentary, however, has been focused on whether or not what Bush outlined is merely a tactical rather than strategic change or whether 20,000 troops will make any difference, etc. Most of the commentators must surely know that those questions are basically background noise. The real issue is that the whole speech was based on the false and dangerous premise that Bush continues to embrace: that there is an “independent” Iraqi army and government. So while Bush made arguments in support of sending more troops to Baghdad and Anbar and nominally admitted that mistakes were made, he went right on talking about the Iraqi military as if it were a unified force. There was no acknowledgment that sectarian militias effectively control large parts of the army and that Iraq’s government wouldn’t survive without the tacit approval of the Shia leaders whom it is supposedly trying to reign in.

The New York Times editorial page sees the Bush speech for what it was - a total sham based on an irredeemable policy. The Washington Post editorial page, however, as is its wont when it comes to Iraq, offers a mealy-mouthed critique in which it says Bush should have talked about stepped up training for Iraqi troops. Tragically, all the training in the world is not going to make a whit of difference.

“In President Ford, the world saw the best of America and America found a man whose character and leadership would bring calm and healing to one of the most divisive moments in our nation’s history,” President Bush said in his prepared eulogy.
- AP